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Oct. 22nd, 2009 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsWhen I picked up Sarah Rees Brennan's The Demon's Lexicon, I knew from interviews that one of the author's goals in writing it was to really get into the head of the Tall, Dark, and Moderately Sociopathic (But Sexy) protagonist who pops up in so much fiction and present an unglamorized version. And she did a very good job with that! It is not the book's fault that I did not love being stuck in the head of a Tall Dark and Mildly Sociopathic Protagonist much of the time, which was the main reason that this book is not making it up into the ranks of my favorites.
What I did very much like about the book:
1. The mythology, which is cool and dark and deals with the consequences/sacrifices of magic and a magical economy in a nicely gritty way. (The basic idea is that to gain power, magicians have to offer a chance for demons to spend time in this world, which generally involves sacrificing humans to be possessed; their opposite number, the members of the Goblin Market, make money selling charms and defenses against demons and magicians.)
2. Many of the characters! Even Nick, who is the protagonist, I found interesting - he is the kind of character who has difficulties with empathy and understanding other people (to put it mildly) and is pretty much entirely focused on his brother Alan, whom he wants to protect even though he doesn't understand him either. It was a cool and unusual viewpoint (and I really did like how she set up for the ending), but the problem for me is that I was just as much or more interested in all the other characters that Nick emphatically Doesn't Care About - and also in Alan whom we only see through Nick's eyes - and so after a few chapters of Nick I wanted to go follow someone else around for a change. Does this happen to anyone else with books, where you enjoy the story but you would like be in someone else's head to see it happen? (This happened to me in Harry Potter, too.)
3. The fact that our protagonists are not on any kind of crusade to save the world, but are in it for their own personal survival and to protect the ones closest to them - the story kicks off when the brother of the girl that Alan has a crush on gets marked by a demon for possession, and eventually Alan also gets marked, and as far as Nick knows the goal is the simple one of Getting The Mark Off Alan, and I Guess Off Jamie Because Alan Won't Shut Up About It Otherwise.
4. The complicated and morally gray backstory going on with the previous generation. I was pretty fascinated by Alan and Nick's morally ambiguous/completely insane mother Olivia - and, again, I really wanted to see many scenes that Nick just did not care about, such as the conversations between Olivia and Alan's crush Mae. (Actually I wanted to see more of Mae in general, who is the main female character, but who, again, I could not get much of a fix on, because Nick does not care about anything about her except that she is occasionally annoying and has boobs.)
However! This is the first book in a trilogy, and from what I understand the other books will be from the viewpoints of different characters, and I am pretty excited for that! The author has posted short stories set in the same universe on her LJ as backstory for some characters who appear in the book, and those actually got me way more excited for the sequels than the book itself did - I would especially highly recommend The Arundel Tomb, which can stand alone as a short story, is not really spoilery for The Demon's Lexicon, and has magic and female friendship and love triangles that aren't!
What I did very much like about the book:
1. The mythology, which is cool and dark and deals with the consequences/sacrifices of magic and a magical economy in a nicely gritty way. (The basic idea is that to gain power, magicians have to offer a chance for demons to spend time in this world, which generally involves sacrificing humans to be possessed; their opposite number, the members of the Goblin Market, make money selling charms and defenses against demons and magicians.)
2. Many of the characters! Even Nick, who is the protagonist, I found interesting - he is the kind of character who has difficulties with empathy and understanding other people (to put it mildly) and is pretty much entirely focused on his brother Alan, whom he wants to protect even though he doesn't understand him either. It was a cool and unusual viewpoint (and I really did like how she set up for the ending), but the problem for me is that I was just as much or more interested in all the other characters that Nick emphatically Doesn't Care About - and also in Alan whom we only see through Nick's eyes - and so after a few chapters of Nick I wanted to go follow someone else around for a change. Does this happen to anyone else with books, where you enjoy the story but you would like be in someone else's head to see it happen? (This happened to me in Harry Potter, too.)
3. The fact that our protagonists are not on any kind of crusade to save the world, but are in it for their own personal survival and to protect the ones closest to them - the story kicks off when the brother of the girl that Alan has a crush on gets marked by a demon for possession, and eventually Alan also gets marked, and as far as Nick knows the goal is the simple one of Getting The Mark Off Alan, and I Guess Off Jamie Because Alan Won't Shut Up About It Otherwise.
4. The complicated and morally gray backstory going on with the previous generation. I was pretty fascinated by Alan and Nick's morally ambiguous/completely insane mother Olivia - and, again, I really wanted to see many scenes that Nick just did not care about, such as the conversations between Olivia and Alan's crush Mae. (Actually I wanted to see more of Mae in general, who is the main female character, but who, again, I could not get much of a fix on, because Nick does not care about anything about her except that she is occasionally annoying and has boobs.)
However! This is the first book in a trilogy, and from what I understand the other books will be from the viewpoints of different characters, and I am pretty excited for that! The author has posted short stories set in the same universe on her LJ as backstory for some characters who appear in the book, and those actually got me way more excited for the sequels than the book itself did - I would especially highly recommend The Arundel Tomb, which can stand alone as a short story, is not really spoilery for The Demon's Lexicon, and has magic and female friendship and love triangles that aren't!
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Date: 2009-10-22 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-22 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-22 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-22 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-22 09:47 pm (UTC)And- yeah, you hit the nail on the head there. I get exactly why it was all from Nick's perspective, and why it was all so cold and distant - it really means the ending works for me, but it was occasionally very frustrating!
(It probably didn't help that I used to read her fanfic, and that was heavily comedy-based, for the most part. It's a gear change!)
Really looking forward to the next one, so I guess that's a good sign.
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Date: 2009-10-23 02:15 am (UTC)(And yeah, me too - that is how I know about the book also. *sheepish* It is definitely not in the same vein!)
The next one I think I remember hearing is going to be from Mae's perspective? I am definitely looking forward to that! I kept wanting way more Mae and Jamie than we ever got to see.
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Date: 2009-11-09 05:11 am (UTC)I really, really, REALLY liked it being from Nick's point of view, but I also LOVE unreliable narrators. Especially when the author is very upfront about the fact that yo, you can't trust this dude's world view. I guessed the ending fairly early on and really wanted to see how this was handled.
In short: I cackled merrily to myself, ate all the short stories, and then cackled some more in utter glee.
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Date: 2009-11-09 05:23 am (UTC)I love unreliable narrators too! And in theory I very much like the Nick-voice and I like what it's doing, and I think she does it well; I think it's just a personal preference thing that I tend to start feeling stuck in a narrator's head if it is not a head that I find congenial.
I LOVE the short stories, though. And the world! And I am really, really excited to get Mae's voice and perspective on everything.